siren
by SavPixie
Summary: a siren's view of the way she lives, more in depth on their lives. i wrote this waiting for my brother to get off the phone.


siren  
  
i was born on a beach in the stormiest of all the seasons, when no sailor would be stupid enough to try to cross the seas, so we are safe to have birthing. that was when i first heard the song, just a simple lullaby, a rhyme you wouldn't think would cause so much trouble if you could really hear it. i grew up hearing my mothers and grandmothers and sisters singing it, and it wasn't anything special really. then one day the storms lifted and we all went to Our Home. it wasnt anything like how i pictured it. the sisters had spoken of how high it was off the water, and how there was no beach, no soft sands to lie on, only hard rocks. the mothers were always talking about how the ceilings of the caves that were Home were high and gave plenty of space to fly in, and the grandmothers missed the caves because the kept out the rain. i didnt particularly like them at first, they were so dark and gloomy, and i missed seeing the skies overhead and feeling the rains land on me. somehow there was a goodness in that, a connection to the world around you. besides, there were the ships.  
  
always the ships. we depended on them, they were our lifeblood. whatever sick and twisted god who made us had made us to trap them, you only had to spend a day with us to know that. most obviously, there were no male sirens, we were an entire race of females, which made procreating without the use of another compatable speices impossible. we all knew to stay away from the mothers when they were pregnant, the children made them ravenous and it was very hard for them to not eat whatever food was put in front of them. as for the rest of us, we could eat the vegtables that grew on the birthing beaches, but Our Home was just a cliff with caves in it, and very little we could eat grew there. but we had to come back to it. it was...i think the word for it is instinct, but it was more complicated than that. we COULDN'T leave it except for the birthing times. it was like a part of us. thats why they had to come to US. that's why the sond had it's effect.   
  
i remember the first ship i ever saw. the grandmothers and the mothers and most of the sisters knew what to do, but the rest of us just flew in circles over the cliff watching and wondering what was happening. i remember that i was seeing some people, not any people i had ever seen, but it was hard to tell what it was that was so different. i remember they were singing, but they werent singing softly, like they did at night when the sun went down and we sang the lullaby, they were fiercer somehow and the harmony was different. it was more like a waking song now, an action song, a song that rememinded me of the storms in the stormy season that had all the thunder and lightning, and the way the sisters and i used to play in it on the stormy nights. the mothers and grandmothers would shake their heads and we would laugh and not care, we were beyond caring then. the song was wilder this time, but it didnt distract me from the people jumping into the water, and the mothers and grandmothers and even my own SISTERS were swooping down on them and pulling me up and it clicked in my head: this was a ship! these were the people who were our food! i swooped down and grabbed one, it wasnt hard at all, and if they say that makes me a monster so be it. i always kill them quickly, i don't know, maybe it's because of their eyes. they always look so sad. i see the changes in their faces, happy at first, so happy i'd give anything to hear what they hear, even for a second, and then the look fades and they know they are going to die and they just look so sad, knowing that they will die here, and that they will never live whatever dreams they had, and that it was all a lie, such wonderful people don't exist, no one just grants wishes for no reason, not even the gods, there is always some sort of price. i see that in their eyes, because they cannot tell me so, and i kill them.   
  
and i sleep and dream of the birthings, and of the thunderstorms, and a way to get away from this rock for good, and sometimes, in the dark when i lie awake, i wonder what it is they hear there, in a simple lullaby, that makes them come. they have heard the stories, there have been people who have sailed past our cliffs who did not come, but something in the song is so wonderful that still they come. i wonder if i will ever hear it.  
  



End file.
